


cemetery love never dies

by jeongins (nascar)



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: ALL THE GOOD STUFF, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Boys Kissing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Magical Realism, Making Out, Smoking, edited previous tag: several catcher in the rye references, funeral homes, like some very pg-13 making out, one (1) catcher in the rye reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28187214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nascar/pseuds/jeongins
Summary: Tuesday is the first time he’s seen Kai since the incident. The incident being the day that Soobin couldn’t open his mouth, jaw wired closed with stupidity and sheer willpower to ruin his own life.He’s kneeling in the dirt in front of some old gravestone, one of the ones that Soobin didn’t memorize yet on account of the engraving having eroded away before he was even born.“Do you think he ever washes that uniform?” Taehyun asks rudely, not taking his gaze off of the figure in the difference.“Don’t be a dick,” Beomgyu chides, “He’s probably like, in mourning right now.”“I kind of like it,” Soobin admits. “It’s cool, like he rolled down a hill or something, in a cool way obviously.”
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Huening Kai
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	cemetery love never dies

**Author's Note:**

> hi hi this is my txt debut i hope u all enjoy<3 plz do not destroy me & happy holidays! thank u to devon for letting me talk to u about fun home for like 1000 years
> 
> this is a rewrite of my old fic first love / late spring in which i added like 300 additional concepts & another 3000 words
> 
> sorry for any typos waa

  
  
  
  


Soobin falls in late spring. It’s a month of mawkish moss swamps and linen tablecloths. It’s a month of Kai’s shoulders and fog haunting at Soobin’s windows.

The air is cloying with sweet rot. Tender petals fall from trees and decay into the marshy grass underfoot and Soobin finds himself lost in apple orchards and final exam preparations.

Kai is elusive in this season. He’s never been an even push and pull of return and fly away but Soobin only now catches him in glimpses. He’s a foamy shadow at the edge of the forest, the snatch of a yellow hood around the corner at school, he’s bruised up under his eyes in the second floor boy’s bathroom.

Soobin counts these sightings with quarters in his pockets. It’s been $2.50 since he’s last had a real conversation with Kai. 

The last time had been when Kai announced that he was no longer going to church. He’d stood nearly nose to nose with Soobin and Soobin had been fixated on the scuffed tips of Kai’s taped chuck taylors.

“I think i’m a sinner, Soobin. The permanent kind anyways. Pastor says that boys like me shouldn’t bother with godly folk, so I think that I won’t.”

Soobin didn’t say anything to that.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Soobin didn’t.

“You won’t.”

And then Kai was off with a quickness. Off with his battered shoes and yellow hoodie and his mouth that had kissed Choi Chanhee behind the youth center last Sunday.

Soobin felt bad for not saying anything. For not asking Kai to stay. For not doing anything. For never doing Anything. But what could he say? Hey Kai, sorry that I’m not replying to you! It’s just that I’ve been thinking about Jung Jaehyun’s dick since that day in basketball last year and have spent every other night secretly praying into my pillow for God to make me straight. I’ll get back to you on this later! So reasonably so, he shuts his trap and let’s Kai hurtle away from him at the speed of light. Like a fucking comet.

/

Tuesdays are sort of reserved for sitting in Soobin’s car outside his family’s funeral parlor with Taehyun and Beomgyu. It’s an accidental tradition formed by Beomgyu’s shit skills at algebra and Taehyun’s infamous bad health, and Soobin’s possession of-- a car. Taehyun fills out Beomgyu’s algebra homework while Beomgyu pencils crude drawings into the margins and Soobin enjoys the presence of being around people his age and not being called downstairs for the afternoon to assist in embalming. Fuck embalming. 

It’s not that bad a place to hang out, Soobin’s car. Beomgyu jokes that he’s lucky his family let him get an actual car instead of recycling one of the old hearses. Soobin doesn’t tell them that he was damn close to having to do that very thing before his older sister stepped in and asked for it instead. Mina’s sort of goth, he thinks, or whatever it's called when you wear that much black lipstick and request a hearse for your 19th birthday.

Point is, it’s a good fucking car. 2009 Toyota Corolla, silver.

There’s a sticker on the steering wheel slapped there by Beomgyu, one he snagged from the front desk, it reads CHRISTLOVE FUNERAL HOME, or it used to anyways. It’s been long since scratched off by the back of Soobin’s thumbnail until it's peeled away to spell out “FUN HOME” in a font that only funeral homes seem to use, like, garamond, but somehow less offending. 

Tuesday is the first time he’s seen Kai since the incident. The incident being the day that Soobin couldn’t open his mouth, jaw wired closed with stupidity and sheer willpower to ruin his own life.

He’s kneeling in the dirt in front of some old gravestone, one of the ones that Soobin didn’t memorize yet on account of the engraving having eroded away before he was even born.

“Do you think he ever washes that uniform?” Taehyun asks rudely, not taking his gaze off of the figure in the difference. 

“Don’t be a dick,” Beomgyu chides, “He’s probably like, in mourning right now.” 

“I kind of like it,” Soobin admits. “It’s cool, like he rolled down a hill or something, in a cool way obviously.”

Beomgyu nods appreciatively while Taehyun’s nose wrinkles. 

“Well excuse me for liking my men  _ clean _ .”

Beomgyu raises his eyebrows. “You like men?”

Soobin’s forehead comes down onto the steering wheel in an abrupt laugh that causes the horn to go off, scaring several funeral goers.

/

Sometimes he doesn’t see Kai for weeks at a time, he gets elusive like that. Sometimes Soobin will wake up before the sun has shown her ugly face and stare out over the marshy knolls in the backyard wondering when Beomgyu will walk out of the fog with his sad little school uniform and his black eye. 

School gets boring, there’s this kind of monotony to it. A litany of papers and exams broken up by showers of Taehyun and Beomgyu’s secret smoke breaks. 

There’s this sort of hunger in Soobin’s chest that gets painful when he thinks about it too hard. The lack of knowing, the not knowing, where Kai is, if he’s coming back, if he’s okay. It makes it hard to breathe sometimes. It’s almost too easy to bat away though. There’s an ease to the practice of pretending that Kai doesn't leave a gaping hole where Soobin’s lungs should be. 

He probably should have gotten his number or email or something.

/

He’s used to Kai next to him. He likes it even. He likes the way that Kai is always looming dangerously close, the way his hot breath fans over Soobin’s neck, whispering obscenities during church. He likes how ice cream smears messily over the corner of Kai’s mouth, and the sticky drool that seeps into Soobin's shoulder on movie nights. He likes Kai’s endearingly straight nose and how he cheats at monopoly. He likes that Kai keeps him on his toes.

What he doesn’t like is the way that Eric Sohn passes by his living room window on Saturday afternoon, buttoned to the chin in his boy scout attire and Kai isn’t there with Soobin to snicker at him. Kai isn’t there to choke out, “scoutfit,” as if it’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever heard, with his laugh condensed into his open palm. What he doesn’t like is that when he’s on his morning run, Kai is standing in the middle of the school baseball field, blood on his cleats and dirt rubbed into the front of his uniform. He doesn’t look at Soobin but slams his baseball bat into the home plate until dust mixes with the fog and Soobin can’t see him anymore.

When he’s walking home on Wednesday afternoon, Soobin tucks his thumb into his cheek and wonders faintly what Kai is doing right now. He wonders if he’s with Choi Chanhee again. Or rather if that’d been a one time thing. Something you only ruin your life with once.

That morning he’d been shouldering off the spring fog at the school gates when he’d overheard a conversation between Hwang Hyunjin and Lee Hyunjae.

  
  


/

When Kai does come back it’s like nothing has changed. He’s still sulky, still wet, and still purple around the eye. 

“Hey,” he says, like he hasn’t been M.I.A for the past month, handing a cigarette out for Soobin to grab between this fingers. 

“Hey yourself,” Soobin says because he can handle this normal they’ve created between them. Their routine. 

They’re quiet except for the bit of coughing Kai does when he sucks in too long. Eventually he asks, “What’s with the suit?”

Soobin laughs, short, and lights the cigarette again, “What’s with the hat?” He fires back. It’s one of those hats you wear on fishing trips that are really just forced attempts at bonding with male role models.

There’s a second where Soobin wonders if Kai’s ever seen a dead person. He also thinks that something bad must have happened to Kai, something really bad for him to turn out like this. Like, an eternal black eye and the constant smattering of rainfall on his school uniform, like he’d been drowned before breakfast. 

Kai smiles dryly, “This is a killing people hat, I wear it and I kill people.”

Soobin accepts that with a nod then looks down at himself. “Funeral after school, my parents want me to help with the service.”

Kai eyes him wearily, “What for?”

“Guess my family wants me to follow in their footsteps,” He taps the ash off onto the pavement and licks his lips, mouth tasting like smoke and cold air. “Helping folks out in hard times you know? Setting up a nice funeral and all that shit.”

Kai mutters something that sounds a lot like  _ that’s bullshit _ and Soobin looks up at him, “Don’t you? Want a nice funeral?”

Kai keeps looking down at a wilted clump of wildflowers, he takes a long drag before passing it back to Soobin, then says, “When you’re dead they doll you up, you know? If I was dead I’d hope someone would roll me into the river or something instead. I’d rather that than anything else people come up with. People coming up on a sunday afternoon to talk about how sad it is and then put dead flowers over your hands like that helps. How come they do that? Who needs flowers when you’re already dead? Nobody.”

Soobin doesn’t say anything the whole good long while that Kai talks because he’s pretty sure that’s a new record for consecutive sentences spoken by Kai and he wants to hold his breath until the end of it. 

  
  


/ 

Taehyun is in the hospital again, his heart is acting funny, it’s probably the weather Taehyun told them, strapped to his white sheets and stuck like a push pin with random monitors. So Liu Yangyang is their new lab partner. When he asks where Taehyun is Beomgyu says, “He’s in the hospital again for his heart.” Then, “probably because of the weather.”

“God you’re all fucked up,” Yangyang laughs in this morbid way then pauses to add in, “Except for you Gyu.” Yes, Soobin thinks, god bless the Choi family and their creation of a completely average in every way possible, baby boy.

“Hey!” Beomgyu whines, “I have dyslexia,” which is hardly heard through his pout. Soobin lends him a consolidary pat on the shoulder anyways. “There, there, Gyu, You can’t help being perfect.”

Beomgyu nods appreciatively.

  
  


/

He sees Kai again that afternoon, when the sun is fighting tooth and nail to shine a little through the cemetery fog. Something about cemetery fog, it’s real permanent stuff, it’s probably because of all the dead people. 

It’s hard to see Kai almost, but he’s there anyhow, soppy uniform and everything. They don’t really talk much but stand shoulder to shoulder in front of that gravestone Kai’s always kneeling at. 

Soobin kind of wants to talk, to ask who it belonged to but there’s this invisible hand around his throat. Probably inhaled too much cemetery fog, real permanent stuff.

But when he looks over at Kai the other boy is already looking right back. He looks a little like those kicked puppies in animal shelter advertisements and it makes Soobin want to stop being such a pussy and reach out and touch him. He blinks and Kai gets sorta closer. It makes Soobin jump a little in his skin. 

He swallows down whole gulps of cemetery fog and asks as quiet as he can, “Yeah?”

Kai is so so close when he breathes out in this way that makes it sound like his lungs are endless, his skinny chest heaving. “You are so, so beautiful.” 

Soobin stares at him then, really stares at him, swallows, then, stares some more. He’s overwhelmed with this feeling like Kai can hear how fast his little field mouse heart is beating. Like he knows. 

Then a car alarm goes off somewhere in the fog and the moment is broken. Soobin whips around to find the noise. When he turns back there’s nobody but himself in the mist, the ghost of warm breath against his bottom lip. 

/

That night Soobin takes his bible off of his bedside table and shoves it underneath his mattress.

  
  


/

  
  


He knows that Kai has been getting into some sort of trouble. The kind of trouble that keeps him from coming home on Thursday night. 

He knows because the police show up at his house to ask questions. Questions like  _ did you know your friend well? _ And  _ do you think he’s the type to run away? _ And d _ o you think he could have killed himself? _

When Soobin gets into bed that night he’s shivering. He’s a coward and he’s cold. 

  
  


/

  
  


When Soobin wakes up, it's to the faint ticking of his bedside clock, the one shaped like a cat that Beomgyu gave him for their last secret santa. The air is buzzing with something. Like a countdown. He’s waiting for someone to snap their fingers and the world to start. 

Soobin has woken to this noise four times in his life. Once when Kai broke some girl’s in the eight grade on accident and ran away. Second when Kai came to crawl into Soobin's bed after his father left home. Third when his father came back. And Fourth, last week when he came to tell Soobin about how the reverend found him sucking faces with Choi Chanhee.

Soobin nearly falls out of bed at the sound of knocks nettling at his bedroom window. He almost falls again when he sees a face nearly pressed against the glass.

Kai looks… Well he looks, bad . There’s a blood stain from his temple, curved down to the edge of his jaw and his eyes are more droopy than usual. He looks grey. It’s something to see Kai bleed. Some far away part of Taehyun has forgone the entertainment of such a possibility. The possibility that Kai isn’t some phantasmagoric funeral parlor fantasy but a Kai-shaped bag of bones and blood.

Soobin scrambles to the window seal, heart in his throat.

The window swings in when Soobin flips the latch and Kai climbs over the ledge wordlessly. Soobin can smell the fog on Kai’s skin and he can tell that Kai’s shirt is filthy. There’s mud and red caked to his shirtfront and Soobin feels lightheaded.

“What happened?” Soobin asks, stupidly. He already knows. He knew what was going to happen and he didn’t stop it.

“She was going to lock me up.” Is all that Kai says before slipping his shirt off and over his head.

Soobin is so lost.

“Kai, what? Where have you been. Do you have any idea how worried I was? Where have you been for the past week.” He means to sound accusing, to sound like he has any place to tell Kai what for.

Kai doesn’t answer him, instead he fishes around for a shirt from Soobin’s closet. He’s rifling through the mess and tangle of high school boy chaos when he twists his torso and Soobin sees it. Awful green-blue bruises painted into Kai’s ribs like a disturbing artwork. 

“Kai,” Soobin sighs, caving in.

Kai doesn’t stop his search, his wrists are trembling, his nonchalance is cracking and Soobin latches onto that. Cruelly, he does, but he needs it. A fissure to break through, a narrow crack to strike Kai’s heart true and tender.

“Kai.”

Soobin tilts his head to the side in exasperation, stepping forward and clutching onto Kai’s wrist, pulling him away from the closet.

“Stay here,” He tells him. “I’m going to run you a bath.” 

Kai looks cornered, terrified. His face doesn’t say much but his eyes are on Fire and it scares something in Soobin bad.

His hand digs into Soobin’s forearm. It hurts but Soobin can’t find it in himself to tell him so.

“You can come with me.” He offers. “It’s just a bath.”

Kai’s eyes seem to clear up at that. “I don’t need to follow you, stupid.”

He lets go of Soobin’s arm though. Soobin lingers for a second but just accepts it and turns to enter his bathroom. Kai follows.

Kai makes himself comfortable on the counter top, swinging his socked feet while Soobin sits on his knees at the bathtub. He’s used to running baths for his mom’s nerves and he figures that manic homosexual and distressed middle age women’s tastes probably run parallel.

He’s right, because after Kai gets over the hurdle of slipping out of his pants, leaving his boxers on, (not that Soobin’s complaining, he really doesn’t need to be dealing with that right now) he sighs openly and sinks down into the water with a contented noise until the water kisses the swell of his bottom lip.

The way his hair falls over his brow, sweet and precarious makes Soobin ache with guilt. His Kai is so precious in his true form, precious enough to protect. Soobin failed there, he was too scared to protect what he had, and now he’s picking up the pieces.

“What-” he tries, feeling odd and exposed. “What did you mean about being locked up?”

Kai doesn’t answer right away. He never does. He takes his sweet time soaking up the lavender mist and dragging his thumb down the condensation on the shower wall.

“Nothing,” He says with his mouth all in the way and it comes out more like  _ nuffin _ .

“How’d you get this then?” Soobin asks, voice softer now, riper. He gestures towards Kai’s ribs.

“Got into a fight with a bear.” He answers stolidly. His brow is creased and his lips are pulled into an impish pout.

“Hyuka.” Soobin tries, he sounds so hopeless to his own ears.

_ You should see the other guy _ is all that Soobin gets before Kai sinks down fully into the water, submerging his face fully.

He wants to hate Kai. He wants to hate the way he leaves Soobin hanging. He wants to hate him for kissing Chanhee before he’s kissed Soobin. And he thinks he does, hate him that is. He hates him in a way that only makes everything else so much more unbearable because when he thinks about the feeling, he doesn’t Hate Kai at all. Not really.

He’s drowning in Kai, actually. He’s lost in him, tied up in him. Part of Soobin's soul will always linger in the back pew with Kai mumbling curse words under the roof of the Lord. Even if Kai kissed Na Jaemin instead of Soobin, and even if he runs away from home, and even if he disappears when Soobin can’t find it in himself to choke out the words. He loves Kai.

Kai: 1

Soobin: 0

He’s snapped out of his thoughts when Kai reappears from the water, hand on his cheek, like there’s something hurting him there.

“What’s wrong?”

Kai bites down on his bottom lip definitely before sinking a little lower and opens his mouth again.

“My tooth.”

He slaps the water childishly, satisfied with the way it sloshes over the tub and soaks into Soobin's knees.

“Hurts,” And the cadence of his voice shakes some of the cold out of Soobin's lungs. The steam from the bath rises and clings to Soobin's nape. “It’s too sharp.”

Dusty tears cling to the brush of Kai's lashes. There’s a double meaning there, Soobin knows there is. The steam condenses over Soobin's brow and he feels cornered. His heart is palpitating in a vicious contemplation, something like Stockholm syndrome. Kai has him trapped.

Soobin finds the orajel on the second shelf behind his older brother’s condoms. The ones he stole from Doyoung in the sixth grade to prove to Kai that he was Too going through puberty. What exactly the condom proved, Soobin isn’t sure. But the impressed look from thirteen year old Kai was enough for him.

Kai is watching Soobin. He’s watching him in a way that makes Soobin want to hide or squirm. He doesn’t understand Kai, he doesn’t understand the why’s or the when’s that come with him

The gel comes out sticky on Soobin's finger, and Kai's stare coagulates between them. Everything feels thick and filmy.

Soobin eyes Kai's mouth suspiciously, wondering if Kai would bite him. He has half a mind to whisper “nice puppy,” but he’s sure that’ll get him bitten quicker than his current plan. So he stays content with taking his opposite hand and bringing it up to Kai's mouth.

It only takes a brush of his thumb for Kai's lips to part open. Soobin finds himself trapped in time for a second, suspended for a breath, eyes glued to rounded teeth and a pink tongue. Then he catches Kai's eyes for a moment and he snaps out of it. The devil on Soobin's shoulder cackles at Soobin's senseless fumbling.

The inside of Kai's mouth is warm, there’s the softness of the inside of his cheek and his teeth against Soobin's forefinger.

He finds the tooth that hurts when Kai whines, a muffled noise that makes odd shivering wings beat in Soobin's chest. Half satisfaction from getting to take care of Kai like this and half something deeply unnerving. 

Soobin makes quick work of it, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with Kai while massaging the gel into his gums. It feels like spring when Kai breathes short and clipped over Soobin's knuckles, his tongue petal-soft.

Avoiding Kai's steady stare means averting his eyes downwards, which he learns is just as bad. Because then he’s looking at the mole that sits just below Kai's faint adam’s apple and it’s magnetic. 

His breath hitches minutely and when Soobin pulls away, a string of spit connects his hand to Kai's mouth, he’s transfixed.

He isn’t expecting the way that Kai lunges forward at him, snapping the string that connects them. Then there’s lips on his and Soobin's heart is in his throat.

It’s damp and he can hear the sound of Kai breathing against him, can feel his heartbeat in his lips. It’s ash soft against his mouth and Soobin thinks that if he inhales he’ll choke.

Nonetheless when Kai inhales against him it’s pleasant in a way that Soobin's never experienced. It’s overwhelming and blooming, breezy.

Then Kai's hands shoot out greedily, pulling Soobin towards him. Their mouths are crushed together and the sound Soobin makes is wracking. His hand slips and after a second he’s soaking, and he doesn’t care. His palm lands in between Kai's knees, wrist cramped against the floor of the bath. Water laps against his shirt front and Kai's tongue does something that draws a shattered noise from Soobin's throat.

Then something breaks inside him and he wants more.

He begins the second kiss halfway over the tub and halfway in, and ends the kiss with his knees over on either side of Kai's waist.

The ends of Kai's hair stick against the back of his neck and forehead, disheveled under Soobin's hands when the older boy takes a handful and presses him against the wall and holding him still.

“You’re so unfair,” Soobin mouths against Kai's neck. He smells like lavender and something fainter, like blood. So unfair.

Kai's chest rises and falls rapidly gasping into the open air. It makes Soobin a little braver. He feels like he’s finally caught up to Kai, like he’s finally one step ahead. It makes him want more, he feels a little feral when he bites into Kai's bare shoulder, hands flitting over his throat and jaw. His mouth is going numb from the gel but he keeps going anyways.

“Soobin,” Kai wheezes, “Soobin.”

Soobin hums in response detaching himself from Kai's skin to cup his face instead. He drags his thumb through the stream of blood on Kai's temple. The tip of his nose is rosy and Soobin has the urge to kiss it, so he does.

“I’m sorry,” Kai says and Soobin doesn’t have to ask what for. He leans in to peck Soobin on the lips again, “I’m sorry.”

His words are peach sweet, lost in their kiss but Soobin doesn’t mind. He understands.

/ 

Half the fun of having a ghost for a boyfriend is severely dampened by… having a ghost for a boyfriend. 

At least there’s that he doesn’t have to worry about wondering if he should get Kai’s email or anything anymore because he comes around a little more often now. Soobin likes to think of this as a result of his good house-training more than anything else. He’s got him practically eating out of the palm of Soobin’s hand. 

“You sound weird,” Taehyun tells him from the backseat, long legs cramped into a pretzel from how Beomgyu’s pushed his own seat back to take a nap of questionable quality. 

Beomgyu snores in agreeance. 

“Also,” Taehyun continues, because he loves to ruin a good thing, “Did he actually say you were boyfriends?”

Soobin scoffs, opening his mouth, closing it, scoffing again, he-- doesn’t have an answer to that. He settles on, “Well he didn’t  _ not _ say we’re boyfriends.”

The fog outside presses its face up against the window greedily like it’s trying to eavesdrop on Soobin’s pain.

Then Beomgyu comes to life in the passenger seat, chest heaving and slams his palm against the radio. Taehyun raises an eyebrow to which Beomgyu gasps, “they were playing the macarena.” 

“Who?” Taehyun asks nonchalant, drawing faces into the condensation. 

“In my dream.”

Soobin bites his thumb. Maybe Kai will show up tomorrow.

/ 

  
  


Kai doesn’t show up tomorrow, but the day after. 

The Back Space, a brick wall sanctuarium for a catalyst of teenage lung cancer and also the high school’s worst student parking lot. It’s also the only place Soobin has managed to catch Kai and he looks bad. Bloody from mouth to cheek, like he was hit in the mouth, hard, then hit again, then wiped the back of his hand through it. 

Soobin pulls off his gloves by the tips of his fingers, eyes not moving from Kai. 

“You’re bleeding,” he says obviously, stupidly. 

Kai shrugs, shoulders curling in a little more than usual. Like weak paper held to flame. 

Soobin reaches out, shaky like Kai might still bite him. He doesn’t, and his cheek is cold in Soobin’s palm. The blood fills up the tiny spaces in his thumb print like one of those red rivers from nature documentaries.

“Did a bear do this too?”

Kai shakes his head, then, “my mom is mean,” It’s like, the first honest thing that Kai has really said. He says it in a way that sounds not wholly honest though, like he’s subbing words for what he really means but Soobin gets the point. Some things are unspeakable. 

Soobin sucks in a breath and pulls him closer. Kai is a little too tall to properly baby anymore but he does his damndest. He presses his mouth to his forehead tightly and the way Kai holds onto him makes him think this might be the first time he’s ever been kissed like that. His breath feels cold against Soobin’s collar. 

“Don’t go back,” he’s sort of begging. “You can stay with me forever, just don’t go back there again.”

There’s something else there too he’s trying to say something along the lines of,  _ I’m gonna protect you this time. I’m sorry I didn’t before.  _

Kai is shaking apart in his arms like that. A little like a ghost, a little like a boy. 

_ Don’t go back _ , he says again and again into Kai’s hair, holding him tighter.

And when the shaking comes to an end and the cabinets stop rattling there’s a bit of an open space in Soobin’s chest, like something got carved out. Something bad, like all the cemetery fog he’d inhaled up and left the atmosphere. Kai looks up at him with those doll eyes, patient like porcelain, the cracks starting to piece back together. 

And that’s when Soobin notices Kai’s gone warm, gone dry. The little perpetual shadow around his eye is lifted like someone had gone and breathed the life back into him. Like sand in a play doll. 

He sounds a little deeper this time, like his voice is something you can cling onto, “yeah?” 

Soobin blinks, then blinks again, then dimples at full tilt. “Yeah.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> kudos + comments r so appreciated!! thank u for reading!
> 
> for clarification: this is supposed to be magical realism where kai is a ghost who had a really bad relationship w his mom who is also dead >:T however while she's a ghost, kai is only in limbo and soobin is able to pull him back into the living world with lots of sweet loving <3


End file.
